Why I Read This Book
I was looking for some light reading to get me through the 20+ hours flight back to Vietnam. So I headed to the fantasy section of the bookstore.
When I saw this book on the shelves, I snatched it up, because people had been recommending this book to me for years.
I had limited experience with Neil Gaiman before. (I read a book he co-authored, but it's difficult to tell how much of the flavor of that book was him, and how much was his co-author).
As I walked up to the cash-register, the clerk commented how much he loved this book. "Neil Gaiman's one of my favorite authors," he said. "His writing style is great. It's just like having someone sitting next to you telling you the story."
The Review
So, let me start by adding my own affirmation to the common consent--Neil Gaiman can write well. He writes very readable prose that keeps you turning the pages.
And, he's got a great imagination. Whatever else you may say about this book, it certainly is imaginative.
Let the reader be warned, however, that this is one of those books that takes its sweet time.
It's a book that values creating an atmosphere over a fast-moving-plot. A lot of time is spent describing places, people, and scenes. For example the author spends several chapters describing life in one small town in Wisconsin.
Some of this is, no doubt, because I bought the 10th Anniversary Edition, which contains an additional 12,000 words that Neil Gaiman's editors had originally cut out for the first edition.
I suspect that Neil Gaiman's editors had been right the first time. (Although not knowing which 12,000 words the editors had cut out, I can't say with certainty. But there's definitely a lot of fat that could use trimming in this book.)
Even the original book edition apparently had a reputation for its love of description. To quote from the Guardian review of the original mass-market paperback (LINK HERE):
There's something raw about American Gods, too. It's a polished piece of writing, no doubt about that, but it has that simultaneous urgency and sprawl of a writer finding their feet. Gaiman's latest novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, is a perfectly-formed parcel of tight writing and economic plotting; American Gods spills over the edges of the page as Gaiman gives himself an almost runaway-truck freedom to pile anything and everything that tickles or interests him into the novel.
The good news though is that Neil Gaiman can pull it off. He writes well enough that he can take a lot of digressions, and still keep the reader with him.
Also, there is tons of detail and conversation packed into this book.
Some of the little details casually dropped in conversation will turn out to be important to the book's plot later. 90% of it will not. But then, that's a good way for the author to hide his foreshadowing and his red-herrings--just cram so much detail into the book that the reader doesn't even know what's important and what's not.
It's a good book, but I'm not entirely sure this worked as a good airplane read. I was looking for something a bit more fast-paced to help distract me from how miserable I was on a 20 hour flight.
Instead I got the opposite of fast-paced. And by the end of that 20 hour flight, all those dream sequences in the novel were beginning to irritate me.
So...let the reader be warned ahead of time: a long sprawling novel, slow-paced, lots of descriptions, lots of dream sequences.
Now, to the positives:
There are a lot of colorful characters in this book. Neil Gaiman has mined through some of the more interesting stories in world mythology so that you don't have to.
I had already known about Thor and Odin, of course, but from this book I got my introduction to Chernobog (W), Wisakedjak (W), and the Zorya sisters (W) from this book.
As well as all sorts of interesting little tidbits of information. (Did you know that Paul Bunyan is not so much an authentic American folk legend, but rather something created by a New York advertising agency around the turn of the century?)
There's a lot of fascinating stuff.
And it's well written.
So I'd give it my recommendation. Just be warned about the slow pace beforehand.
Connections With Other Books I've Read
* At one point, Stranger in a Strange Land is mentioned as a book that is in one of the charater's car.
I’m not
sure if I would ever have gone out of my way to track this book down, but when
I saw a free copy laying around the staff room, I thought, “Yeah, why not?”
And
finally, being interested in mythology, the mythological themes of the book
caught my interest.
The
Review
A really
fun little book.I laughed a lot while I
read it, thoroughly enjoyed it, and would recommend it without hesitation.
Despite
being a joint project with Neil Gaiman, this book reads like pure
Pratchett.The book has Pratchett’s
normal sarcastic narration, the usual Pratchett cast of lovable odd-balls, and
it follows Pratchett’s usual conceit of taking a serious situation and
inflating it to the point of absurdity.(According to Wikipedia Terry Pratchett actually did the majority of the actual
writing on this book.I was not
surprised when I learned this.)
The
book is about the antichrist and the coming of Armageddon.The concept of course has its origins in
Christian mythology, but the popular conceptions which this book plays off of
have as much to do with Hollywood movies like The Omen as a strict reading of
Revelations.
The
coming of the antichrist is usually played either as religious propaganda to
scare sinners into repenting (as in The Left Behind series) or for horror thrills (as in The Omen) but of course in the world of
Pratchett and Gaiman, everything becomes ridiculous.
***SPOILERS***
In
Prattchet and Gaiman’s world, the demons are bumblers who can’t keep track of
the real antichrist (they switch the wrong baby at birth, and end up spending
11 years raising the wrong kid).The antichrist
himself turns out to have a bit of an independent streak and, much to the
frustration of heaven and hell alike, refuses to simply play the role that
destiny has allotted to him.(All the
armies of heaven and hell are assembled for battle, and much to their mutual
frustration, the antichrist refuses to start Armageddon.)
The
whole premise of the book is to have fun with Christian mythology, but by my
reading it’s not really an anti-Christian book.The core concepts of Christianity are treated with respect.(Nothing compared to say the blatant
anti-Christian messages of Golden Compass trilogy).
The
book only gently asks questions.
But
the questions are, nevertheless, there.
Take
for example the opening of the book, which contains a conversation between the
serpent and the Angel:
It was a nice day.
All the days had been nice.There had been rather more than seven of them
so far, and rain hadn’t been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the
first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one.
The angle of the Eastern Gate put
his wings over his head to shield himself from the first drops.
“I’m sorry,” He said politely.“What was it you were saying?”
“I said that one went down like a lead balloon,”
said the serpent.
“Oh. Yes,” said the angel, whose
name was Aziraphale.
“I think it was a bit of an
overreaction, to be honest,” said the serpent. “I mean, first offence and
everything. I can’t see what’s so bad about knowing the difference between good
and evil, anyway.”
“It must be bad,” reasoned Aziraphale,
in the slightly concerned tones of one who can’t see it either, and is worrying
about it, “otherwise you wouldn’t
have been involved.”
…
“You’ve got to admit it’s a bit of a
pantomime, though,” said [the serpent]. “I mean, pointing out the Tree and saying “Don’t
Touch” in big letters.Not very subtle,
is it?I mean, why not put it on top of
a high mountain or a long way off? Makes you wonder what He’s really planning.”
“Best not to speculate, really?”
said Aziraphale. “You can’t second guess ineffability, I always say. There’s
Right and there’s Wrong.If you do Wrong
when you’re told to do Right, you deserve to be punished. Er.”
They sat in embarrassed silence
watching the rain bruise the first flowers….
That’s
just the opening page.But from there, the
questions continue all the way through the book.What is God’s ineffable plan?Does the antichrist have free will?Do demons and angels have free will?If all demons originated as fallen angels,
then would they still have some of their original goodness left in them?If the antichrist is Satan’s son, and Satan
was originally an angel, then wouldn’t the antichrist be genetically
predisposed to be good instead of evil?If
it’s already pre-ordained that the demons will lose Armageddon, than why are
they so eager to bring it about?Could
it be that it’s not so clear that they will lose, and that the Book of
Revelation is just propaganda for one side?
None
of these questions are ever pressed very hard, but they pop up in the
book.It’s not very hard hitting
philosophy, but it’s just enough to tickle your brain a little bit as you read
through the book.
Final Verdict—A very fun book, and well
worth reading.
This wasn't a great movie, but I found it to be a very pleasant waste of time.
Part of it might just have been the mood I was in. I was exhausted from a day of hiking around and swimming, and I wanted to just sit in my apartment and watch a light adventure story--Something that wouldn't make me think to hard, but something that might excite the imagination just a little bit.
This fit the bill. It was fun, and imaginative, and whimsical.
There are a lot of bad fantasy movies out there, but I’m a great fan of the genre when it’s done right, and this was done right. Like all great fantasy movies, it doesn't rely simply on big battle scenes, but also manages to convey a sense of wonder about a strange new world.
The film tries to create the feeling of a fairy tale, and I think it succeeds. It borders on being a little bit too sappy at the end, but on the whole it strikes a good balance.
There’s a lot of black humor mixed in as well, which threw me off at first but once I got used to it I started to enjoy that as well.
As a fan of “The Office” and “Extras” I enjoyed seeing Ricky Gervais in this movie, although I wish he would have had a bigger role. In my opinion he is (once again) criminally underused. Although during the time he is on screen, he plays a character very similar to his character in “The Office”, which perhaps is just one big inside joke. People who have seen “The Office” will think it’s funny, people who have not might not get the humor.
My only regret is that once the movie was over, I saw on the ending credits that it was actually based on a book by Neil Gaiman. Maybe I should have read the book first before watching the movie.
….Oh well, with my memory, I’m sure by the time I get around to reading the book in a couple years I’ll have forgotten most of the movie anyway.
(Movie Review)
